BT Line Cancelled

Hey guys, just wondering if any of you could give me a little advice. My mate has just moved into a new house, the previous owner had cancelled their BT line and BT told him he may have to pay upto £200 to have it reconnected.

For some reason he seems to think the line rental was switched over to talktalk, or bulldog - or someone similar. Now we called Bulldog and asked them, they said they didnt have rights on the line and talktalk said they would call back but never did (shock horror lol).

I am not sure whats going on, I have never heard anything like this. But he said when he moved into his last house he just phoned BT and they hooked him up for free. So the only reason they could be wanting to charge him now is if his line as been switched to another provider?

The wire and BT master socket is still there, everything works but when you hook up a phone there is no dial tone. He seems to have no way of finding out who the line rental was once with and looks as if he may be paying BT a huge wedge of money just to get basic telephone.

BT Line Cancelled

I understand that if the previous occupier was using TalkTalk or similar the line is still a BT one, it's just that the phone provider has a wholesale deal with BT and, if necessary, they make any arrangements for BTs engineers to carry out any line servicing or repairs

I reckon that the thing to do is persist with BT to get them to admit who has control over the line-- it's part of their system anyway, goes through their street cabinets, along their poles and into their exchange

£200 is the amount normally charged to bring in a brand new line, not to reinstate an old one if memory serves me correctly

BT Line Cancelled

Yeah this was what I thought, they said they would have to send out an engineer to check the line or something. But it just seems like some sort of scam lol.

All they would tell him was that the line had been cancelled, they wouldnt even confirm if it was with another supplier or not. A bit shabby if you ask me but other than pestering them I dont see a solution.